Political Ceremony
A one day workshop at the Department of Politics, University of Sheffield,
Tuesday 7th June 2011
Room 109
The workshop has been organised by the Leverhulme programme on Gendered Ceremony and
Ritual in Parliament which examines how struggles over the meanings and performance of
ceremony and ritual in parliaments secure and reproduce as well as challenge and transform
institutional norms. The work of the programme, focusing on the opening ceremony of the
parliaments in Westminster, India and South Africa, offers a chance for the programme to
engage with scholars working on political and public ceremony more broadly. Political
ceremony has long been an object of study for anthropologists and historians and the
workshop seeks to draw on the expertise of these fields in developing its own work. The
workshop is chance for an interdisciplinary conversation about how political ceremony should
be understood and analysed and what it can tell us about the transformations of societies.
A focus on political ceremony and ritual draws attention to the role of the symbolic within
political systems. The workshop seeks to debate how best public and political ceremony can be
studied and what conceptual theories are most useful for understanding the significance of
ceremony and its location in wider social practices of national and transnational formations.
The programme’s comparative work on Westminster, India and South Africa invites
exploration of colonial legacies and the multiple effects of Empire on political cultures, for
former colonies and in the metropole. The workshop also seeks to grapple with debates
surrounding the invention and ‘subvention’ of tradition and the place of continuity amidst
narratives of change and transformation. The workshop will debate the rich and diverse
insights that can be gained from the study of the symbolic and public ritual for understanding
the practice of politics.
The workshop is structured into three sessions: the first session will look broadly at political
and public ceremony; the second focuses on the work of the GCRP programme on the opening
ceremony of parliaments; the third session will be a round table discussion on the insights
offered by the study of the symbolic and political ceremony.
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Enquiries to Rachel Johnson: r.e.johnson@sheffield.ac.uk
Room 109, Department of Politics
10:00 – 11:15
GCRP TEAM MEETING
11:00 – 11:30
Workshop Arrivals and Coffee
11:30 – 01:00
Public and Political Ceremony
Chair: Joni Lovenduski (Birkbeck College, London)
Dominic Bryan (Queen’s University Belfast): title tbc
Alastair Mann (University of Stirling): title tbc
Arundhati Virmani (Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales Marseille):
The Material Dynamics of Political Ceremonies: India in the 20th and 21st
Centuries.
Discussant: Georgina Waylen (University of Sheffield)
01:00 – 1:45
Lunch
1:45 – 3:15
Ceremonial Openings of Parliaments
Chair: Sarah Childs (University of Bristol)
Rachel Johnson (University of Sheffield): A Pageant Apart From Politics? The
Opening of Parliament in South Africa 1910-2010
Carole Spary (University of Warwick): title tbc
Faith Armitage ( Birkbeck College, London): title tbc
Discussant: Gary Rivett (University of Sheffield)
3:15 – 3:30
Coffee
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Enquiries to Rachel Johnson: r.e.johnson@sheffield.ac.uk
3:30 – 4:30
Roundtable Discussion: Why study the ceremonial and the
symbolic in politics?
Shirin Rai (University of Warwick)
Daphne Halikiopoulou (London School of Economics)
Daniel Hammett (University of Sheffield)
Colin Hay (University of Sheffield)
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Enquiries to Rachel Johnson: r.e.johnson@sheffield.ac.uk